Minister some day, and she would be my wife--and yet without her it
wouldn't be worth anything to me. Ernshaw, isn't it a bit too much to
ask a man on the threshold of his real life to give up all that for the
sake of an idea--well, a scientific conviction if you like."

"Strait is the Gate, and Narrow is the Way!" exclaimed Ernshaw. He
seemed to tower above him as he stood over his chair; Vane looked up and
saw that his eyes were glowing and his features set. His lips and voice
trembled as he spoke. His whole being seemed irradiated by the light of
an almost divine enthusiasm.

"Maxwell, will you be one of the few that find it, or one of the many
that miss it, and take the other way? As a good Christian, as the son of
a Christian man, you know where _that_ one leads to.

"After all, Maxwell," he continued, more quietly, "the trials of life
are like lessons in school. You needed this experience or you would not
have got it. In every fight you must win or lose. In this one you can
and must be the victor. I think, nay, I know, that I am pointing out to
you the way to victory, the way to final triumph over all the evils that
have forced you to a choice between following your own most worthy
inclinations, and what you now think an intolerable misery and an
impossible sacrifice."

He held out his hand as he spoke. Vane did not know it at the time, but
in reality it was a hand held out to save a drowning man. It was a
moment in which the fate of two lives was to be decided for right or
wrong, for good or ill, and for all time--perhaps, even for more than
Time. Vane gripped Ernshaw's hand, and, as the two grips closed, he
looked straight into the deep-brown eyes, and said:

"Ernshaw, that will do. By some means you have made me feel to-night
just as I did that day when I was talking with her the last time. Yes,
you are right. You have shewn me the right way, and, God helping me,
I'll take it. I suppose if she doesn't marry me she'll marry Garthorne;
but still, I see she mustn't marry me. They are coming down for 'Commem'
to-morrow. I shall see her then, and I'll tell her that I have decided
that there must be an end of everything except friendship between us.
Yes, that is the only way after all--and, now, one other word, old man."

"And that is?" said Ernshaw, smiling, almost laughing, in the sheer joy
of his great triumph, as he so honestly believed it to be, over the
Powers of Evil.

"Well, it's this," said Vane, "m